Waifs and Strays
by alocin
Summary: The bits and bobs that never amounted to much on their own, rescued from the depths of my hard drive. All Joker, Harley and mostly JxHQ.
1. Introduction

**Waifs and Strays**

My writing files are full of these – stories that were started as experiments but ultimately abandoned due to running out of time, plot or enthusiasm. I was sorting through and weeding out the files that barely got past the first line, and found that a few add-up to enough of a plot that someone else might be able to follow them. So why not let them stand on their own hypothetical feet?

Plus there are a couple of lines that I really liked at the time and still think are kind of funny now, and I'd rather they were pushed out into the universe to make a life of their own rather than gathering dust in the "My Documents" section of my hard drive.

Joker being laid up and force-fed chicken soup? Harley desperate to go ice skating? Plots involving flesh-eating bacteria on toilet seats? It's all here.

Don't expect too much polish, watch out for jumps in plot and time, and here and there we're down to bare dialogue. But you might still find something you like.

Ttfn

alocin


	2. Bored Now

A typical intro to something more that never got passed the intro stage, but I like it for what it is.

**Bored Now**

"Boring. Boring. Mind-numbingly dull. Urgh _The View_! I'd rather stick a pencil in my eye…"

The television remote sailed through the air and connected forcefully with the off button, causing Whoopi Goldberg's head to shrink to a satisfyingly tiny blip in the centre of the screen and disappear.

The Joker slumped back against the couch in disgust. "Hundreds of channels and they fill them all with garbage. Not even one news story or documentary about me! The broadcasters are failing in their duty to the viewing public."

He stared dejectedly at the ceiling while pondering ways to send an appropriate message to the networks, but nothing really grabbed his attention. He just didn't feel in much of a scheming mood.

Truth be told he hadn't felt like plotting anything for some time; it had been weeks since a proper bolt of creative genius had struck him. He'd never lacked for brilliant plans before, and it was as if he'd suddenly been sucked dry of all his pizzazz, his sparkle, his flamboyant talent for concocting chaos and destruction. It was intensely frustrating

But at least there was someone around to take his frustration out on.

"Harley!" he yelled, pausing to listen for an annoyingly chirpy response from some corner of the factory they were using as a hideout.

Nothing. In fact there was a strange silence about the place. No inane chatter, no tuneless humming, no pitter patter of light footsteps skipping across the floor in answer to his call. He could even hear the hyenas snoring as they dozed in the corner. The Joker felt his frustration grow rather than dissipate.

"Harley! What are you playing at? Get over here right this second!"

Still nothing.

He sprang to his feet, determined his errant henchwench would soon be sorry for ignoring him – once he found the little miscreant.

He'd checked over half the abandoned factory, including inside a dozen packing crates and underneath the cushions of the couch he'd being lying on, before recalling that he'd sent her out to get cereal at some point in the distant past.

"Good God woman, how long does it take to buy a box of Lucky Charms?" He questioningly addressed the silent factory and two sleeping hyenas. "If the little twit's been picked up and hauled off back to Arkham she can just stay there – I'm not busting her out again."

Fair enough the last time he had been breaking himself out as well, but he'd still had to go to all the effort of killing an extra guard to get the keycard for her cell, and that had added at least twenty seconds to the escape. It was almost more trouble than she was worth.

At least after being subject to an enforced separation of several months she'd been suitably appreciative of his efforts on her behalf. They were holed up in a ratty motel for several days but she hadn't even once gone all snivelly like she was prone to when he'd got a little enthusiastic with a new toy – in this case, an old fashioned straight razor. Absence certainly did seem to make her heart grow fonder when it came to their little games.

Harley's current absence, however, was just an annoyance.

*Something something something la la la

"I-I'm sorry Puddin' – I wasn't dawdling, honest! The first store was out of Lucky Charms, so I had to go a couple of blocks further up. But I was still only gone for thirty minutes!"

He rolled his eyes. Didn't she realise how long thirty minutes _was_? "Whatever – just hand it over."

She pulled the box from the brown sack. "Don't you want me to pick the cereal bits out, like usual?"

"No, you took so long about it I'm practically wasting away – just give." He grabbed the box from her nervous hands and departed to the limited kitchen you would typically expect to be found in abandoned toy factory, returning with a bowl, milk and a spoon. He slumped back down on the couch and tore open the box, scattering a light shower of marshmallow pieces across the floor, then started eating in silence.

Harley waited a minute or two to be sure her Puddin' wasn't about to change track and send her off to do anything else, then furtively crossed the room to perch on the opposite end of the couch and watch him eat. He responded by flicking soggy cereal pieces at her. She took this as a sign he was feeling somewhat more content with the world, although she was a little apprehensive at the prospect of an imminent marshmallow induced sugar-high given his crankiness of late.

Mistah J's "schemers block", as she thought of it, had been very hard on him but equally hard on her. Sure when her Puddin' was in one of his fits of creative genius he could almost entirely forget she existed, working away all tirelessly all hours of the day. And she sometimes could feel a little neglected when he was too busy working to take his Harley for a spin. But that was Mistah J's way, and his brilliant single-mindedness was one of the things she found most attractive about him. Well okay there was a very long list of things she found attractive, but that one was definitely near the top.

Lately though he just couldn't seem to get enthusiastic about his plots and schemes to bring chaos to Gotham and antagonise the Bat-brigade, and this ennui made him frustrated. And when her Puddin' was frustrated, Harley got nervous. Her only option was to steadily keep trying to perk him up.

"So, Mistah J…" she started cautiously, but adopting a light and casual tone, "you been thinkin' any more about that idea you had to redecorate City Hall? Cause I really liked the one with all the toilet paper and - "

"It was lame, Harley." He interrupted flatly, continuing to stare into his bowl of cereal and fishing for marshmallows. "Lamer than a one legged horse."

"Well what about that idea you had to replace all the Gotham police department guns with paintball gear?"

"Ultimately unsatisfying."

"Joker cattle; like you said before – happy meals!"

"Formulaic and old hat." She got another spoonful of soggy cereal pieces flung her way.

"Putting a bumper sticker on the Bat-car that says 'Honk if you like cookies'?"

"That's one of your immature suggestions, not mine, and its as unfunny now as when you last brought it up."

Harley sat further down into the couch, abashed. "I just hate seeing you all miserable, Puddin'. I know you've got gazillions of great schemes locked up in that brilliant brain of yours – I'm just tryin' to help you find them."

The Joker tossed the empty cereal bowl in an unspecified direction behind the couch and sighed. "Look, Pooh, if you want to help Daddy, stop twittering on about my current very dull creative hiatus and do something more entertaining."

Harley evidently had just one kind of entertainment in mind as the best way to cheer her Puddin' up, almost flying across the couch to wriggle into his lap. Before he could say a word she was nuzzling his neck, pawing at his jacket and reaching below the waistband of his trousers.

He pushed her off his lap decisively and she fell to the floor in a bundle of bruised disappointment. "No. Something different, Harls, not just you and your one-track mind."

*Plot train temporarily runs out of steam


	3. Hallucinations

I always loved in cartoons where the devil and angel on someone's shoulder are arguing with them, and in Harley's solo series she has something similar at one point with mini!Harleen and mini!Joker. I couldn't resist taking that forward but it didn't quite end up how I wanted and I gave up before I was properly satisfied with it.

**Hallucinations**

"You do realise I'm a hallucination, right?"

Harley aimed a kick at a stray can as she stomped though the deserted, filthy alleyway. How she hated that boringly rational voice. She couldn't believe she had ever been that dull and full of over inflated self-importance.

"Shut up. I don't hallucinate. I'm not _crazy_ crazy, no matter what Dr Leland writes in my file."

Accepting the label of insanity and a bed at Arkham over a bunk at Stonegate was one thing – insanity was a technical legal matter and not a medical diagnosis. But she wasn't a fruitcake like most of the other patients who had spent time within its damp stone walls.

The annoying voice coughed slightly, and recited as though reading straight from a textbook. "A hallucination is a perception in the absence of a stimulus..."

Harley stopped and whirled on the spot, flinging her arms wildly in frustration. "I know! I'm not dumb! I did go to some of those lectures in college."

In fact it was the psychiatrist in her that was the problem. For some reason her earlier white-coated self just wouldn't stay quietly shut away in a dusty, cobwebbed section of her memory labelled "Pre-Mistah J". She didn't need anything from her old life; she had long since locked it all in a mental closet and thrown away the key. But now something had evidently managed to wriggle out, and it insisted on popping up and watching what was going on in Harley's new life, picking fault and making unwelcome comments on every little thing.

It was annoying but didn't mean she'd gone cuckoo.

"Why can't you accept what I am? Denial won't help you deal with the problem."

Harley kicked out at a bigger target; a dumpster. There was a satisfying clang but mostly it just made her foot hurt. "You're _not_ a hallucination because I'm _not_ crazy. Maybe I'm just imagining you."

When she first heard the voice she thought she'd been recalling an usually vivid memory of something she'd said a long time ago. Pre-Mistah J memories did sometimes escape into her conscious mind, but they were usually pretty fuzzy and vague. Then the voice started making annoying comments about things as they were happening. It was when she finally addressed it with a frustrated demand to shut up, and it responded by challenging her obvious aggression issues, that she finally accepted maybe this was more than just her memory playing tricks on her.

Then she'd spotted the tiny floating version of herself hovering over her right shoulder.

She hoped Mistah J had just given her a particularly well-aimed backhand or pushed her into a wall for a perfectly good reason she hadn't quite caught up with, and she was just seeing little people rather than stars or tweety birds like people did in cartoons.

Her attempt at rationalisation wasn't helped by the fact that her Puddin' had been several miles away locked up in Arkham at the time, and still was.

Since this had all started a week ago her new "imaginary friend" had not stopped nagging and sniping.

"If you were just imagining me you'd be able to make me disappear or turn me into a rainbow coloured unicorn or something. That hasn't happened yet."

"Maybe I just haven't tried." She said, defensive. She wasn't going to be bested in an argument by a twisted part of her subconscious mind.

"Go on then."

Harley glared at the miniature blonde, with those silly glasses she'd once thought made her look intellectual, willing her to disappear. But she remained hovering in mid-air, such a caricature of an angel on her shoulder that she should have had wings and a little golden halo. Since these didn't appear on the white-coated figure when she thought it, Harley finally decided to accept that this wasn't the work of her overactive imagination.

"See? Still here and you can't make me stop talking."

"Shut up. Go bother someone else."

"I'm created by _your_ mind. You can't hallucinate me into talking to another person! They wouldn't hear me."

"Just shut up!"

*Mini!Joker makes an appearance

"Puddin'? Where are you?"

A perfect tiny figure of the Joker suddenly appeared in her line of sight from where he'd been hovering somewhere over her left shoulder. "Honestly Harl your head must be more full of straw than Scarecrow. I'm not actually _him_ you nitwit."

Her heart fell. "Are you sure, Puddin'?" She asked hopefully.

The tiny Joker rolled his eyes. "If I was actually the Joker do you think I'd have nothing better to do with my genius than create some sort of miniaturised hologram of myself that only you can see and hear?"

"I guess not." She lowered her head, abashed. Even a hallucination of Mistah J was about a gazillion times smarter than her.

"Quite right. It's good to see that at least part of your mind has a proper understanding of my brilliance." He paused and gave her a tiny mocking smile that looked so much like the real thing she wanted to melt. "I'm just surprised it's taken this long for you to completely crack and invent an imaginary me. You really can't last for five minutes on your own anymore, can you?"

"Aww, that's not true Puddin'!" She protested. "Me and Red do okay when I can't be with you…"

"Ah yes – the weed." A tiny glower. "But I don't see you covered in suspicious grass stains and thorn scratches from scrabbling about amongst her foliage. What's wrong – Pammy come down with a nasty bout of Dutch Elm Disease?"

Harley blushed only slightly at his insinuation; it wasn't as though she hid anything from him, but he usually chose to ignore whatever she got up to when she spent time with Ivy. "No silly; she's in Arkham with you. Well – the real you." She paused. "Shouldn't you know that if you're technically a part of my mind?"

"Where's the fun in having a conversation with yourself if you know both the questions and the answers?" He shook his head regretfully. "So no Puddin' and no Pammy. That explains it then. Without a firm guiding hand – or vine at a push – you derail faster than a train on broken tracks."

"Hey!" Deserved criticism from her real Puddin' she could take, but she felt herself starting to get hot under the collar at further sniping from part of her own mind. "It's not like I'm dependent on you and Red…"

"Yes you are." The Joker stated firmly.

"I would have to agree." Her former self chipped in.

Harley glared at them both. "Hey who's side are you on! He's the one who made us into this."

Both the tiny Dr Quinzel and Joker fell about laughing.

"My poor deluded little Harleykins."

"Oh Harley you are silly some times. Don't you remember how it really happened?"

"What?"

*Continues, then switch to Bat!Vision

It had been a relatively quiet night on the crime front; there was nothing on the grapevine about any planned heists or stunts from the usual suspects. Just a couple of muggings to interrupt and a minor smash-and-grab at a gas station to drop in on. The perpetrators had all been left tied up for the police in various states of consciousness, and now Batman was considering calling it an early night – or more technically morning – and heading for home and a few extra hours of sleep. He crouched on a favourite vantage point overlooking one of the warehouse districts intending to make a final visual sweep, his mind already half on thoughts of a soft pillow. Then he spotted a familiar red-and-black shape slipping around a corner and out of sight. _Quinn_.

Batman pushed the thoughts of clocking off early to the back of his mind and quietly followed along the rooftops, making sure not to get too close. He knew that the Joker was still firmly locked up at Arkham – the Wayne Foundation had made several large donations to the hospital recently, funding upgrades to the security system which seemed to at least reduce the frequency of the inevitable escapes. Without the object of her infatuation present he knew the former psychiatrist could be unpredictable. Sometimes when they were apart she would seem quite rational, like the normal and seemingly well-adjusted young woman she had once been. At other times an enforced separation from the Joker seemed to intensify her mental imbalance, and the results were never good for anyone in the vicinity.

The lithe figure practically skipped her way down the narrow alleyways, heedless of the unusual sight she created – that of a woman in a skin tight jester's outfit, out for a walk on her own in one of the less salubrious areas of Gotham at 2am. Of course anyone who hadn't been living under a rock for the past couple of years would recognise who she was, and thus who would be rather annoyed if someone were to "damage" something that belonged to him. But it still seemed to indicate a healthy dose of naivety; she should at least have recognised that she was being very obvious about her presence, and that she would quickly catch the attention of both the police and himself.

Unless of course she _wanted_ his attention, and this was a not-too-subtle trap.

He recalled Quinn's on-again-off-again partnership with Poison Ivy, and quickly checked for signs of any man-eating vines about to creep up behind him. Then he remembered that Ivy was currently at Arkham as well, after a particularly nasty incident with the mayor, a proposal to sell-off an area of parkland and some bloodthirsty genetically-altered cacti.

So the doctor-turned-jester was on her own. No Joker to devotedly follow, no Ivy to collaborate with. What was she up to? Without them, what was her agenda?

Batman recalled the one time before he had come across just Harleen Quinzel; when she had been declared sane and made a short-lived attempt at "going straight". He still believed her intentions had been good – it was her inability to comprehend and follow the expectations of the rest of society that had been her downfall. Just a short while later she was back out of Arkham courtesy of an escape rather than certification of sanity, and back at the Joker's side.

He pulled up short from making a leap to the next rooftop when he realised the figure he was following had stopped, and appeared to be agitatedly shouting at someone. He couldn't quite make out what Quinn was saying, or spot who she was talking to in the dark alley, so he quietly eased his way down a fire escape attached to the side of the building to get a better position.

As he drew closer he realised that she was alone, and concluded she must be using a small earpiece radio or miniature cellphone to issue instructions to someone. This was until the costumed woman started glaring and pointing at a spot in the air, and he caught an angry shout of "You are _not _a hallucination!"

He felt a curious mixture of pity and anger. Pity that an intelligent young woman had become so clearly deranged, and anger that someone had deliberately made her this way for his own twisted amusement.

He watched silently as she continued to argue with thin air, occasionally kicking out at a nearby dumpster or whirling and flailing her arms in frustration at some response only she could hear. Then she seemed to still, and her voice became quieter as she muttered and whispered things he couldn't make out.

He was conflicted. On the one hand Quinn clearly wasn't in the middle of some grand scheme to rob Gotham National Bank, kidnap someone high profile or even steal some kid's lunch money. Frankly she didn't seem to be up to plotting anything, and her usual bad influences were conspicuously absent. Then there was that little seed of pity he felt, looking at what she had become and thinking back to what she was before. If he took her back to Arkham, wouldn't she just fall back in with the Joker and Ivy and end up even worse?

But at the end of the day that was where she was legally ordered to be detained, and he couldn't leave her wandering the streets shouting at thin air. If nothing else she could pose a danger to herself.

"Ms Quinn."

She whirled. "Batsy! Oh thank goodness; you gotta help me they're going all psycho-analyst on me!"

"Who might that be?" he asked cautiously.

"Them! The perceptions-without-stimulus things!" She paused and her gaze shifted, nose wrinkling in annoyance behind a layer of greasepaint. "Of course I know he can't see you, stop treating me like I'm an idiot."

"Ms Quinn I think it might be best if you come along with me back to Arkham."

"Yeah I've been startin' to think that might be an idea..."

"You're willing to voluntarily commit yourself?"

"No! What would that do for my reputation? But I'm willing to come quietly." She paused. "And between you and me Batsy, I think I need a bit of a break. I don't like bits of my mind arguing with me all the time."

*To be continued


	4. Library Hijinks

I quite like this as a little drabbley moment and I wrote it so long ago I can't remember now why I didn't finish up post it somewhere at the time...

**Library Hi-jinks**

"Hey – gimme that!" The woman grabbed at one of the books stacked on the table, turning it over in her hands as an excited grin spread across her face. "You've got one of my books!"

For a moment Gina didn't know what the strange woman could be talking about until she read the spine of the book held in her hands: "Psycho Killers And The Women That Love Them Too Much". The author's name was typed neatly below – Dr Harleen Quinzel.

Harley Quinn.

The words of the professor leading her Psychology 101 class came rushing back: Dr Quinzel, an almuini of Gotham University, being an all-too-public display of the dangers inherent in trying to treat the more extreme cases of mental illness.

"Yeah – it's, uh, it's really good," she managed, hoping to elicit a positive response.

"Hey, ya liked it?" the woman smiled down at her with an almost bashful grin. "Well it's always nice to meet a fan – most of the people I meet on this job are either semi-literate thugs, dead or kinda woozy from blood loss. I guess that's one of the good things about hittin' an educational establishment for a change – you get a much better class of victim!"

Gina didn't know if she was supposed to respond to that comment, or what on earth she could have said, so she settled for a nervous expression of panicked bewilderment. The woman – she didn't know whether to think of her as Harley or Harleen or just the crazy psycho with the gun – was now leafing through the book and nostalgically chuckling at random passages. Then she looked up as a thought had suddenly struck her.

"Hey, kid – do you want me to autograph this? I'm sure I've got a sharpie or somethin' in here somewhere…" She began digging through the sequinned purse bringing out a collection of compacts and nail files, a pack of cherry bubble gum and a rubber chicken.

"Well, actually it's sort of not mine…" Gina quietly pointed out. "It's a library copy."

Being ignored by the woman as she rifled through her bag and desperately willing this conversation to end as quickly as possible, Gina gave a quiet cough. "Look, just, uh – you can use my pen," she gestured with a nod to the well-chewed biro laying next to her notebook on the table.

"That'll work – thanks!" The woman stuffed the scattered contents back into her purse and picked up the pen. "D'ya want it personalised?"

Gina inwardly groaned. "No, really it's okay…"

"C'mon – otherwise you'll only sell it on ebay for beer money! I was a student once too y'know. What's your name?"

"Gina Stetham," she said, somewhat reluctantly. Five second later she realised that this would have been a great time to use her roommate's name, or one of her professor's names, or even the name of the kid who used to pull her braids in grade school. Any name other than one she'd actually given.

"Gina? Cute name. Okey dokey – 'To Gina, stay in school and one day you might be a best-selling author too. But if that fails there's always big money in a life of crime! Hugs and kisses, Harley Quinn.' Is that okay?"

"That's great. Really. Wonderful in fact." Subconsciously she realised she was starting to babble, a sudden surge of adrenaline making it impossible to regain control of her runaway-mouth. She had a burst of nervous laughter. "I bet I'll be the envy of everyone else in our Psych class for sure!"

"Psych class? You're taking psychology too? Are you going to major in it?" The woman perched herself on the edge of the desk, her legs swinging. "Does Professor my-head-is-so-stuck-up-my-own-ass-it's-unbelievable Stokes still bore you all to death with the statistics slides? Y'know when I took that class one of the guys switched out the slides and replaced them all with centrefolds. That was a riot! Old Stokesy nearly burst a blood vessel!"

As the woman giggled Gina remained frozen in place, cursing herself for unexpectedly drawing this lunatic into a full-on reminiscing nostalgia-fest about her college days.

*Cue Joker!lanche

"Harley! What are you playing at?"

"Look Puddin' – she's got one of my books! It's required readin'!"

"What are they trying to teach these poor, misguided children – how _not_ to write a serious piece of academic literature?"

The woman giggled and tugged playfully at his purple sleeve. "You're such a kidder Mistah J!"


	5. Future Imperfect

This seems to have been an AU-thing with an older Harleen Quinzel and possibly a Nolan!verse Joker? I'm not entirely sure, but it looked like an interesting idea I ran out of plot steam with.

**Future Imperfect**

The new purpose-built Arkham Hospital might have been superficially less foreboding than its previous incarnation, but all the efforts of the architects and designers with their colour wheels couldn't hide the intensive security that marked the hospital as the containment and treatment facility for the most dangerous of Gotham's criminally insane.

On this particular evening it was a facility that had one less patient for evening medication than scheduled and a significant number of extra visitors in the form of half the Gotham police force. Although they didn't know it, they had been accompanied by an additional and more solitary investigator.

From the shadows of an empty office Batman watched the forensic technicians gather evidence that would more than likely never be required at a trial, given that the law had already established the perpetrator was beyond criminal responsibility. The pointlessness of their work and waste of resources was not improving his mood. The very fact that he had been able to gain access to the building unnoticed when it should have been at heightened security had already caused an upwelling of anger. After all the pain and loss it had taken – personal and to the city as a whole – to shut the Joker away, it hadn't seemed too much to ask that the authorities could effectively keep the lunatic looked up where he could do no further harm.

He quickly surveyed the area of the asylum that seemed to be the focus of attention – a treatment room in the high security wing. Surprisingly, given the individual in question, there was little sign of any damage to property. The human cost was another matter. He had watched as one guard was wheeled out of the building on a gurney; the lack of urgency from the paramedics said as much about his condition as the sheet pulled up over his face.

Further down the corridor an older woman sat on a chair at the nurses station, staring ahead uncomplainingly as a young paramedic flicked a small penlight across her eyes. Her dark hair was lightened by a liberal sprinkling of grey, escaping what had probably begun the day as a neat bun. A livid ring of bruises encircled her pale throat.

"Both equal and responsive… you check out okay, ma'am, but I'd really like to take you down to Gotham Central and keep you in overnight for observation just to be on the safe side."

"That really won't be necessary, and quit ma'am-ing me junior. I'm a doctor not a brothel-keeper."

"Um, I'm sorry – doctor." Batman observed young paramedic flush slightly but persevere. "Even so, really it's for the best if we admit you-"

"I said I'm fine," the woman interrupted with a huff, "and I'll sign whatever waiver you like if it'll stop you pawing at me any further." She raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Then if I collapse and die in fifteen minutes time it won't be on you, okay? That's a win-win."

The woman rose and smoothed down the jacket of her conventional charcoal skirt, arranging the once-crisp collar of her white shirt to hide the worst of the bruising. As the paramedic reluctantly left to rejoin his colleague who was checking over other members of the asylum staff, she was approached by another man who had also been closely observing the exchange.

"Dr Quinzel, do you have a moment?"

"Sure – I think my patient schedule has just opened up for the foreseeable future," she remarked dryly.

"I'm Commissioner Gordon." James Gordon offered a hand, which she took. "I'm sure you appreciate the urgency of the situation, and it's vital we move quickly to prevent things getting any further out of control." He looked around for a moment. "Do you mind if we speak in private briefly?"

"Of course – we can use my office, it's just down the hall."

*Enters office, Bats steps back

"So you were treating the Joker for some time… I'm sure during therapy sessions and interviews he must have shared quite a bit of information with you, maybe details of associates he conducted business with, locations he may have frequented. That sort of thing?"

"And now you'd like me to share some of that information with you, right?" She laughed. "To save you the ignominy of me refusing to tell you, I'll just make it clear now that I don't know where he may have gone. And that even if I did, I would not be disclosing that or any other personal information he may have mentioned to me as his treating psychiatrist."

"Dr Quinzel, that lunatic is responsible for several dozen murders. He killed another guard during his escape today, and your name could easily have been added to that list as well."

She raised a hand to her throat, tracing the marks that darkened her skin with a distant expression. "If he had wanted me dead, I would be."

"So you're saying he chose not to kill you. Why would that be?"

"I'm a psychiatrist, not a psychic. I wouldn't pretend to understand every decision that a man like him makes."

"Your professional opinion then."

"Maybe because he only needed my security pass, and being a lady of mind-your-own-damn-business years I'm not exactly a physical threat in the same way as an armed security guard?" A shrug. "Or maybe because they served scrambled eggs for breakfast today instead of French toast. It could be either or both – there's no way to know for sure short of asking him yourself. And even then would you trust the answer he gave you?"

*Bats intrusion

[Descent into poorly blocked out dialogue!]

"The media would have us believe that you're wanted by the Gotham police in connection with at least five murders."

"Do you have reason to believe something different?"

"I've been having sessions with the Joker for over six months now. As you might guess, you're one of his favourite topics of conversation." She gave a small, sly smile. "He had a lot to say about the _late_ Harvey Dent too."

"And you actually choose to believe the ravings of that madman?"

"My role as his doctor and psychiatrist was to listen and to support his treatment regime, not to judge what he had to say."

"I'm sure you already heard my answers to the Commissioner's questions. Do you have anything more to ask or were you looking to book some therapy sessions of your own? If so then I charge by the hour."

"Do you have any idea where he could be going – did he mention anything?"

"As I said before, I don't know. He could be half-way to Albuquerque by now for all I know."

"He wouldn't leave Gotham. You don't need a doctorate of psychology to see that."

"Again, like I said, even if I did know I wouldn't tell you. Especially not when it might help a wanted criminal vigilante locate him. For all his vilification in the popular press, the Joker does not deserve to be strung up from a lamppost."

"I want him brought back to face justice, not killed."

"His obsession with you will just keep driving him to try to push you over the edge."

"He won't succeed."

"If you don't do it this time, then what about the next time he escapes and kills more people? Or the time after that? What's the magic number of deaths that'll suddenly make it seem like the right thing to do, and how's it different from the number before that?"

"Thanks for your time, doctor. If you do change your mind I'm sure you know how to contact me – maybe give it some more thought."


	6. Chicken Soup For The Super Villain Soul

Aww, the fluff of Joker in bed with soup! Why didn't I finish something with this?

**Chicken Soup For The Super Villain Soul**

The Joker cautiously wiggled his toes, giggling slightly at how comical they looked sticking out from the cast that encased the entire lower part of his left leg. He always found broken bones more itchy than painful – after the initial breaking anyway, and that was usually dulled pretty well by the adrenaline of the moment.

In the past broken limbs had always been accompanied by re-admittance to Arkham, and he'd be stuck being wheeled from cell to therapy and recreation without much of a change in routine just because he couldn't walk. But on this occasion he was convalescing in the comfort of the Ha-Hacienda thanks to the collapsing masonry that caused his broken leg also trapping Batsy on the other side of the building. He figured that left him and the collapsed building even on this occasion.

Harley had suffered an unexpected fit of competence and quickly got the getaway car, which she helped him into. Although he had been forced to threaten her with dire consequences if she didn't stop blubbing about how tragic it all was long enough to see where she was driving. A quick trip via one of the less-shockable, more discrete back-alley doctors to set his leg and he was right as rain. Except for the whole not being able to walk thing.

Now he was thoroughly, completely and utterly bored with it all and was considering the merits of self-amputation rather than having to endure "complete rest and elevation of the limb" for one minute more. Playing the suffering invalid with Harley had been fun for a while, but it was a one-note joke that was getting old fast.

Watching her face crumple with empathic anguish at every mock gasp of pain he pretended to bite back as he shifted his injured leg had given him several chuckles. And sending her on ever more complicated errands to find things to keep his mind off "the terrible burning agony of bones knitting back together" had kept him smiling at first.

He asked for back issues of the Gotham Times featuring his best schemes – she cleaned out the central library's archives. He asked for his best TV news appearances – she made a compilation tape. He asked for a DVD of The Nutty Professor dubbed into Farsi – she found one from a bizarre little shop in the narrows that doubled as an opium den. It turned out that translation into Farsi didn't make the jokes any better.

But there was one area where he could have done without Harley's mothering concern, and that was food. He asked for Lucky Charms with the cereal bits all picked out – she brought some kind of shredded packing material that looked disgustingly healthy and bran-filled. Whenever he asked for anything else, he ended up with a bowl of chicken soup.

The first time she'd presented him with a bowl of the steaming liquid he'd stared at her in confusion.

"Harley, unless I've become delusional from trauma, this doesn't look much like a grilled cheese sandwich."

"You're not delusional Puddin'! But a cheese sandwich isn't gonna do ya any good. You need stuff that'll get you better, so I made ya some nice chicken soup instead."

He instantly paused in moving the spoonful of soup towards his mouth to taste. "Made as in from an actual chicken, or made as in opening a tin and heating it in the microwave?" he asked suspiciously.

"From a chicken!" she replied indignantly. "It's an old family recipe. I haven't made it for years, but I think I remembered everythin'. It's pretty much just chicken and vegetables, so there's not a whole lot to forget as long as you remember to fish all the gizzards out before ya serve it..."

His previous experience of Harley's culinary repertoire had only stretched as far as her placing items between slices of bread and burning everything else beyond recognition. She'd even brought him a burnt bowl of cereal once. (_"Sorry Puddin' – I thought you might like the marshmallows melted…"_)He'd thought he was being pretty optimistic asking for the grilled cheese sandwich. He wouldn't have put it past her to have fished everything else out and kept the gizzards by mistake.

"Not that I don't have faith in the generations of Quinzel's that evidently survived eating this soup, pumpkin, but I think what daddy really needs is a nice grilled cheese sandwich."

The determined expression on Harley's face didn't falter. "No doin' Puddin'. Chicken soup has been scientifically proven to have medical benefits. Unlike grilled cheese sandwiches."

"This is mutiny." He muttered darkly, cautiously tasting a tiny amount of the soup. As it wasn't actually disgusting he ate some more, but kept up the glowering expression.

When Harley turned up with another bowl of soup he decided it was time to draw a line.

"Harley I distinctly recall requesting something with more melted cheese and less vegetables. I ate your silly soup earlier, why have you produced more of it?"

"I told ya, it's good for you. I made enough to last all week. When that's finished, I'll make some more."

"Do you want me to turn into a chicken?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Don't be silly Puddin'! Now you eat up your soup. If you finish it all you get some ice cream."

"I'm not seven!" he shouted after her as she skipped off out of the room, before pushing the bowl of soup to one side and sinking into a sulky huff.


	7. NonStarters

This is what it says on the tin - the complete non-starters that don't get a "chapter" of their own! I somewhat hope these could still be resurrected in the future; particularly the flesh-eating bacteria on toilet seats.

**Complete Non-Starters**

"But you promised!" she protested, lower lip starting to wobble. That gave him less than ten seconds of leeway before she broke into full-scale sobbing.

The Joker just wasn't in the mood to deal with one of Harley's insane tantrums. The physical approach would only make her cry more, and he would end up with an even more useless assistant and a headache. But trying to reason with her when she was like this was almost exactly as successful as reasoning with an angry four year old. Plus he couldn't actually remember what she was so mad about anyway.

"Now pooh, you know daddy is very busy with his grown up work." He hedged, even though he'd actually spent the entire morning playing hangman against himself. Despite boredom he doubted he'd want to fulfil any sort of 'promise' Harl had managed to wheedle out of him in an unguarded moment. It certainly didn't sound like the kind of thing he'd do while actually _conscious_. But there was that concussion Batsy'd given him the other week, and his brain had been pretty scrambled for a few days…

"Aww c'mon Mistah J! I know you'll love it once you try it!"

What might he love? Images of murder, mayhem and various obscene acts danced gaily through his imagination.

Ahh, but this was Harley. What did _she_ think he would love?

A more worrying montage of scenes appeared, best described by the horrific genre of 'romantic comedy'. He physically shuddered, then squared his shoulders.

"I don't have time to waste on whatever frivolous nonsense you're blathering about now."

"But it's Christmas!" she whined. "And you promised you'd take me ice skating!"

[What was I thinking?]

* * *

"Dr Quinzel?"

"Call me Harley. You gotta first name, B-Man?"

"Whatever threats the Joker has made towards you or your loved ones… you'll be protected. Once he's back at Arkham-"

"Nah," she interrupted. "Mistah J says he's bored of starin' at inkblots, he doesn't want to go back to Arkham. He wants to have some fun out here."

"Dr Quinzel-"

"Harley." She interjected, an edge of force creeping into her previously casual and cheery tone.

"Harley," he conceded. "You were reported missing the day after the Joker broke out of Arkham. He was too badly injured to have orchestrated the escape alone. The police assumed it was his usual hired goons who broke him out, and that you were either abducted or went into hiding. But I think that Joker had someone on the inside, and I think that that someone was you. I just don't know why."

"Sounds like a pretty impressive deduction, but you only get a B minus B-Man cause I bet you've just seen the security tapes with me makin' mincemeat outta those rent-a-cop security guards." She mimed a few shadow punches, dodging and weaving, then stopped with a wistful sigh. "I wish I coulda got a copy of the tape for Mistah J; he almost bust a gut when I told him about knockin' that guy's teeth out with the rubber chicken."

*Something

"You came to rescue a wailin' damsel in distress? Oh boy, your tiny bat-brain drew the wrong conclusion there."

"Do ya see any guns pointed at my head?"

"As I'm sure you know from his files, Joker has more ways of manipulating people than just putting a gun to their head. Maybe you had financial problems and he offered to clear your student loans. Maybe he discovered certain indiscretions in your personal life and threatened to make them public, ruining your career. Maybe he threatened your family, friends, loved ones."

She scowled through her mask and greasepaint. "How's about he just asked nicely and said pretty please with a cherry on top?"

"No one would just decide to help him escape of their own free will. If you think that's what you've been doing then he's just succeeded in manipulating you without you even realising it."

"That's not true! I had to help him get outta that hell-hole of a hospital, but not because of anything he said or did. I did it because I knew it was the right thing to do. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

"Whatever threats the Joker has made towards you or your loved ones… you'll be protected. Once he's back at Arkham-"

"How can you possibly believe that helping Joker is 'right'? He has absolutely no regard for human life, and you're a doctor."

"Yeah, well I decided that peerin' inside screwed-up heads all day every day wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Sure it's great loss to psychiatry, I know, but I'm not the first woman to give up a successful career for love."

"Love makes you do some crazy things."

* * *

"It's definitely bubonic plague. Look, look here – does this look like a bubo to you?"

"No doubt about it, I'm done for."

"That's just a swollen gland. You haven't got any sorta plague Mistah J – bubonic or otherwise. I keep tellin' you, you've just got the flu."

"I know how you spent the overwhelming majority of your time at medical school, missy. And remind me, how long had you been practicing before your licence was revoked?" His tirade was momentarily halted by a hacking cough, and he continued through closed eyes bearing a pained expression. "Forgive me if I'd rather wait for a more qualified medical opinion."

"None of the back-alley doctors in your little black book have valid licences!" she replied hotly. "That's why they're back-alley!"

"Maybe syphilis."

"Syphilis? Why would you think you have syphilis, huh? And why are you only mentioning it now?"

"Puddin', please, let me take the laptop away – it's not doin' you any good to keep searching for symptoms on Wikipedia. The internet'll always turn a simple headache into a brain tumour or flesh eatin' bacteria attacking your eyes from the inside out."

A spark of enthusiasm was lit within his fatigue-dulled eyes. "Flesh eating bacteria, ehy?" Joker tapped furiously as he was capable of. "Oh look, pictures! If I make it through the day I want you to track down some samples of this bacteria so I can spike those silly paper toilet seat covers in public restrooms all across town."

"In fact if I die, that's how I want you to honour my memory. With hundreds of buttocks being slowly devoured by hungry bacteria."

"That's a tropical disease. Unless you've been spendin' a lot of time in Ivy's new rainforest greenhouse and eatin' handfuls of the soil it's pretty unlikely."

"I could have caught it from you."

"What – you think I go round to Red's to eat soil?"

Joker muttered under his breath about eating something.

*Continues


	8. Art Therapy part 1

**Introduction**

I started this back in August 2008 buoyed on a wave of Dark Knight-fever and newly introduced to the JxHQ fandom. So what did I do? I toddled off down the well trodden path of a Mad Love-esque story. (It's not Nolanverse though – does that get me points?) Given that I didn't have a whole lot of new twists to put on the concept it's probably best that it ran out of steam around the 13K word mark once Harley was off cavorting with stolen rubber chickens.

It's not the most original re-telling around and I wouldn't claim this was a work of literary genius, but it was my introduction to writing Joker and Harley so I'm glad I kept it for posterity.

**Art Therapy Part One**

_"No one can drive you crazy unless you hand them the keys."_ - A very knowledgeable bumper sticker

"Mr Joker, I'm very sorry but I'm afraid going to have to step down from my current position as your psychiatrist."

If the cafeteria at Arkham had served gin and tonics alongside the tired salads and cardboard lasagne, Dr Quinzel would have bought a double to chase down her half-nibbled sandwich. Her stomach had been doing nervous loops ever since the morning meeting concluded and she'd made her decision.

Her supervisor, Dr Leland, evidently noticed that she'd left most of her lunch and stopped by her table to ask if she was feeling unwell. Some half-whispered, seemingly embarrassed fabrication about it being the wrong time of the month had got the older woman to leave with a sympathetic smile and the offer of an open box of Tylenol in her office if Harleen needed any. She'd smiled a slightly nauseous smile of thanks and quickly retired to the consulting room to prepare for the last session she would enjoy with the Joker.

Enjoy? She mentally slapped herself again and groaned at her inability to just let go. Therapy was not supposed to be a pleasant hour or two of gossiping chat and laughter! She'd always suspected that the planned sessions she stumbled her way through hadn't given her patient any clinical benefit.

The random meandering conversations they'd had recently, about anything from old movies to the sad decline in the wearing of hats by the general populace, couldn't even _pretend_ to have an actual medical basis.

But Harleen had enjoyed every second of them, grasping at the opportunity to just sit and listen to his entertaining stories and refreshing opinions. He was ever the showman and she had found herself content to be his audience of one. But she hadn't been there as a doctor. She was selfish to have continued the charade that the talks had been therapy sessions for as long as she had, purely for her own gratification.

So now she was sitting in the spare consulting room assigned to interns, staring at the institution-grey carpet and doing her silently staring patient a favour.

Not that the motivation made it any easier. A small part of her, obstinately clinging to the romantic daydreams, wondered whether he might be just a little sorry not to see her again too. She quickly muffled it with more layers of guilt.

"I am really sorry. I just don't think that this is working out. You're doing great – you really are – it's just me, I – I – I don't think I'm really helping you, medically..."

She winced slightly as she was unable to keep the nervous stammer from her voice and hoped he wouldn't notice. It wasn't that she was afraid of him. Her patient (not that she should really call him that anymore, she figured) – _the Joker_ had never even raised his voice in all the sessions they'd had together, let alone shown any sign of the sudden violent outbursts his file made such colourful and frequent reference to.

She just really didn't want to let him down.

Him of all people, who had suffered so much at the hands of others all his life – both society at large and those who were supposedly close to him.

She recalled the stories he had told of his childhood. Entirely unprompted – she knew that other doctors had asked before, pressed him to try to find out his past; why he was the way he was. After a few sessions stumbling through the plans and notes she prepared, he had suggested they just talk. She had gratefully agreed – the clumsy entry-level psychological tests were about as much use on him as the plastic cutlery they served with the patients' meals. She was quietly ecstatic that he seemed willing to open up to her.

Looking back, she could see the signs that she was starting to fall for him. He chuckled and grinned and – befitting his self-appointed title – cracked jokes more often than anyone she had ever met before. She had started nervously smiling along with him to be polite at first, but soon found herself genuinely laughing in response to his tales and tall stories. There was never any violence or horror – just laughter and fun.

Some of the humour had a darkish tinge, but the butt of the joke always seemed to have deserved it in some way or another, and her sympathies seemed best placed with the smiling narrator. She would always be wiping away tears of laughter by the end.

He even told corny old knock-knock jokes with complete sincerity – that had probably been what pushed her over the edge. She'd always had a thing for guys with a sense of humour.

And sure; maybe white skin and shocking green hair wasn't her usual type, but he was certainly striking…

So she mostly listened, and talked as little as possible, trying not to bore him with too much about her life. But when she did talk he had seemed eager to listen, to share. And then amidst the discussions of other, lighter topics, they came – the tales of abuse and torment at the hands of his father.

She realised she had come dangerously close to losing her heart completely after that. He had trusted her with his precious secrets, and she had clutched them to herself not as a doctor charting his progress and trying to unravel the cause of his illness, but as an infatuated admirer. In her own clumsy way she still desperately wanted to help him heal, but with love and affection rather than lithium and valium.

The obstinately rational part of her brain mentally kicked the soppy romantic part for not recognising just how ridiculous this was the first time she had thought it.

Now she had to stop before she did any more damage to his chance of rehabilitation.

Dr Quinzel risked a quick glance across to the traditional psychiatrist's couch where the Joker lay. He had recently been downgraded to handcuffs only, with one leg fixed to the end of the couch, rather than a full strait jacket. It was a great step forward, but she knew it was all his own work rather than anything she might have contributed. He seemed still and calm in his slightly baggy off-white pyjamas, but part of her thought she caught the slightest glimmer of annoyance flash in his eyes. She blinked and it was gone, replaced by his typical gleam of good humour.

"The old 'it's not you, it's me' speech, Dr Quinzel?" He paused for a moment. "You know – I'm disappointed."

They were familiar words she had heard so many times before from parents, teachers, coaches; all convinced she had such potential that she never seemed to fulfil. It was hard to reach for the top when you were weighed down with a crushing amount of self doubt.

The words still hurt, and she could feel the beginning of tears start to well up. She kept her head down so he wouldn't see.

"I'm really, really sorry – "

A weary sigh interrupted. "Yeah I think I caught something about that…"

"I just don't think I can give you what you need. I'm not very experienced, as you know, but I thought I might be able to help, and I really did try…" The part of her that had been so rational earlier was calmly noting as she strayed closer and closer towards an actual crying fit, right there in front of him. "I'm sorry, I am. It's all my fault. I never should have… I couldn't… Sorry… I just hope I haven't set back your rehabilitation, and, and…" She trailed off into an embarrassing half hiccup, half sniffle, and stood up fully intending to leave right there and then before she could humiliate herself any further.

A sudden peal of joyful but terrifying laughter stopped her in her tracks.

* * *

Harleen turned disbelievingly, stunned into a sober silence mid-hiccup. She had never heard the Joker give more than a fairly normal sounding chuckle or giggle before, but now she realised that had been like an engine gently ticking over. This was his true laughter roaring into life.

He was half sitting up on the couch, clutching at his ribs as if the sudden explosion of uncontrolled laughter had caused him to tear something. "Oh Harley, Harley, Harley. How I've waited for that."

She somehow found her voice. "Sorry I – Sorry, what?" It squeaked a little more than she would have liked.

The flash of annoyance zipped back and away again in a second. Then giggling resumed. "I just seem to have been waiting _forever_ for you to have that emotional breakdown. To give you some credit you lasted a lot longer than I thought you would."

Harleen sat heavily back down on her chair and gazed at the Joker, completely agog. She had absolutely no idea how to respond to this sudden change of gear. She had never seen him like this in a session before. Was this a different side of himself he had previously kept hidden?

The Joker seemed to take her silence and rather bemused expression for a request to explain further. He sighed and resolved to speak slowly, using small words.

"Look Harl, it's really quite simple: along I come for one of my twice-annual R&R sessions here at jolly old Arkham. I can get some down time, recharge my batteries, mess with a few shrink's heads for sport." He stretched out on the couch, his long legs pulling the chain of the cuff on his ankle taut.

"Then, along you come. Quite clearly a kid who was still doodling _Rorschach_ ink blots in the corner of her high school term papers when I started psychiatrist-baiting at an Olympic level. You were about as prepared for me as once of those tasty baby antelopes waiting for a rather peckish leopard to wander past and gobble it up. It was only a matter of time before the pressure made steam shoot out your ears.

"You know what my first thought was when you toddled in here right at the beginning? 'Who did she sleep with to get this appointment?'". He seemed to take a brief break from his grandstanding and stared at her keenly. "Was it Dr Arkham? Because I've got a bet with myself it was actually Dr Leland you see – "

"I haven't slept with either of them, thank you very much!" She was slightly shocked to hear her own voice, surprised the outraged denial had managed to sneak out while her brain was still frozen in a jumble of confusion and nervous tension.

"Shame. Well I can't believe you got here without a bit of extracurricular assistance from a professor or two." Unbidden her mind flashed back to a few unfortunate incidents with her dissertation supervisor, and her crimson face confirmed this for him without the need for her to attempt another, less truthful denial.

The Joker paused to consider for a moment, thoughtfully rubbing his chin as best he could with the handcuffs restricting his arm movement. "But if you didn't use feminine wiles to wheedle your way into seeing me, why else would they assign me a doctor who's about as experienced in psychiatry as Batsy is at flower arranging?" He folded his arms with a quiet huff. "I just don't know whether to find it plain insulting or hilarious."

Before Harleen had even formulated a response he suddenly sat up straighter, as if hit by a flash of inspiration. "Ah! Maybe… they just wanted to see what I'd do to you." He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time, his eyes slowly sweeping up from her sensible court heels, over her ever so slightly too high skirt and ever so slightly low blouse, stopping at the neat precision of her bun. She shifted self-consciously under his gaze.

"Sweet little thing. Blonde, pretty. Knows it. Probably a cheerleader in school – pep rallies and school spirit, and rah rah rah. Fun and games for as long as possible, eh? And why not! But suddenly you're all grown up, with a certificate on the wall you didn't entirely earn the traditional way." He gave her a slight leer, but the expression shifted seemingly without effort into one of clucking, motherly concern. "Now the little girl-next-door has to pretend to be a serious grown up doctor, and you don't have the first clue what you're doing." Another peal of laughter burst from his chest, but his face showed no sign of mockery. "Ha! They might as well have served you to me sitting on one of the dinner trays from the cafeteria."

If he had said it in a sneering way she probably would have been in tears again by now, hotly denying the claims. But he'd sounded so matter of fact, and… almost sympathetic? Any attempt to dispute his words would have been useless. She felt as transparent as the Plexiglas walls of the high-security cells.

She had told herself she was too young, too inexperienced. He was right – she was still in school when he started having sessions at Arkham. It was like asking a toddler to do brain surgery. Why had she been so stupid and naïve as to think she could "help" someone as brilliant as him? And why had the senior staff even allowed it?

Thinking back, she recalled Dr Leland's concerned frown.

"I don't know Harleen. The Joker does have a very high turnover of doctors, but it would be best for you to settle in a bit first. Find your feet. Then we might see about you shadowing a few sessions."

A month later, after much pestering and nagging and promises of taking on extra administrative grunt work, Dr Leland had let her sit in with the Joker's psychiatrist at the time. Dr Harrow was an older man, bearded and slightly rotund, with years of experience in his field. She had watched and learned and tried to take copious notes. The Joker didn't seem to give her a second glance, although she'd certainly given him several. Lurid mug shots and CCTV-stills of his crimes had been on the front of three of her textbooks – and now she was in the same room as him!

Her silent observation hadn't provoked any sudden outbursts that would disrupt the dialogue between doctor and patient, and she had taken diligent notes, so she had been permitted to attend for one session a week.

Two months later Dr Harrow had suffered a rather nasty accident involving a paperclip he had carelessly left attached to a file of papers in his consulting room while conducting a session with another patient. He was reported to have requested an immediate transfer to another facility; that had been delayed for a few days while they worked out an eyelid blinking code that could cope with full sentences.

With few volunteers to fill the open slot as the Joker's psychiatrist, Dr Leland had reluctantly been convinced by Dr Quinzel's boundless enthusiasm and copious pre-prepared notes on session topics. She'd talked her way in to a probationary period in the role. Her supervisor noted that the Joker had been cooperative since she had started attending some of his sessions, and to be blunt she was the only one on staff with any experience in dealing with the Joker who was willing to actually go back into a room with him. Later, with hindsight's superior clarity, Dr Leland would see this as a warning sign in itself.

* * *

"I wanted to write a book."

There was her voice again, words escaping before her brain even realised she was able to talk. Book? What did she mean book? She wasn't an author.

Then it suddenly hit her and her hands jumped to cover her mouth, too late to call the words back. Harleen shrunk back into her chair.

She _had_ wanted to write a book. That had been her plan; it was why she had chosen Arkham to train, and why she was so anxious to get to talk to the Joker, to listen to his therapy sessions. People ate up stories about his crimes!

She had planned to write about the real Joker – what was inside his mind, his past and his twisted schemes for the future, and he was going to be her dream ticket to a life of fame and fortune. She would be the most well-known, successful psychiatrist in all of Gotham!

Take that, everyone who had ever seen her as just another empty-headed blonde bimbo!

She wracked her confused brain. How had she forgotten what was basically the foundation to her entire career plan?

Ever since the Joker had started to open up with her; from the beginning of their little chats, from the first time she realised that he looked strangely handsome when he grinned (which he did often), and the first time he talked about the cruelty at the hands of his father – it was as though the thought of writing a book had just disappeared. Sharing this side of the Joker – the side that only she had seen – with the rest of the world… it was just wrong.

The book honestly hadn't crossed her mind in weeks.

"And what book would that be, Dr Quinzel?" A good portion of the usual levity seemed to be missing, and the fleeting frown had settled upon his face with no sign of the grin returning.

Staring at the floor again, Harleen knew he would be angry – or worse, feel betrayed. But it seemed pointless trying to lie to him. He would see straight through her, his gaze a spotlight illuminating every corner of her mind.

"I wanted to write a book… a book about you." Her eyes darted up nervously to check his reaction. He didn't seem angry or upset. Instead he lay back, grinning once more, and preened with mock modesty from his reclined position on the couch.

"Well I knew you were a fan… Some sort of coffee table affair? Lots of full page portraits with commentary about my greatness? I like it. I'll have my agent call your agent…"

"No, no – you don't understand!" She interrupted, sitting forward slightly on the chair and twisting her hands together anxiously. "I was going to write about you, the real you. The background to your crimes, from a psychological perspective. I was going to sell your story to get money and fame and I know it was wrong and I'm so sorry…" A fleeting glare from the couch limited her to one sorry. "I really am though, and once I actually got to know you and realised how brilliant you are, and what you've faced… I promised myself I'd never do it. I couldn't.

"I hope you won't be too angry..." She tapered off, confused to see the Joker grinning again.

"Now why would I be angry, Harl? So you wanted a bit of fame and fortune. There's no harm in that. And I never object to free publicity."

Harleen edged further forward on her chair towards him. "But what about all the things you told me; about your childhood and the awful things that happened? I haven't told anyone anything about that. I haven't even kept the notes I made! I know that's against protocol, but I didn't want anyone else to see them." She blushed slightly, knowing that this was as much so she could keep the secrets he'd shared to herself as for his confidentiality.

"Well maybe there are a few things I would rather some prying eyes didn't see." The Joker conceded, his expression becoming slightly more guarded. "Wouldn't want Batman getting all mushy and sentimental over my tragic childhood; he wouldn't be nearly so fun all teary-eyed and snivelling. That's very thoughtful of you Harley."

His praise made her glow with satisfaction, and for a moment she felt quite dizzy with delighted relief. She couldn't believe he wasn't upset – that he seemed to have forgiven her!

"You – you really mean it? You're not mad?"

"Of course not! I know you've always had my best interests at heart, since the first day you walked in here."

"Oh Mr Joker…" That suddenly seemed too formal, and she slipped into shortening his name as she had with friends and teachers back in high school. "Mr J… I'm so glad you understand. I really have tried to help!" Her heart sank again, matched by her expression. "But I don't deserve your forgiveness."

She felt small and insignificant in the face of his intense scrutiny. "I was selfish. I put myself before your treatment. I-I think I may have developed inappropriate and unprofessional feelings of affection for you."

* * *

"I see." The Joker unnaturally white face was mock-grave. "Well that's clearly very serious. For the record, how inappropriate are we talking here? Did it involve fantasising about you, me, this couch and slipping into a matching pair of handcuffs? Because I could actually see the fun in that."

"No!" She gasped, shocked. Although as soon as he said the words, images started to form in her mind without any conscious effort on her part. And it would be easy enough to find a spare pair of handcuffs from the security office…

The Joker didn't miss the shift in her expression from embarrassed surprise to actual consideration of his suggestion, even if it did only last a second or two. Then embarrassment returned, with just a hint of naughty schoolgirl still lurking below the surface. He grinned with satisfaction.

Oh she had been worth all the weeks of inane chatter and careful drip-feeding of angsty childhood "memories". Breaking shrinks was fun, but too easy in the long run. It didn't provide him with a worthy outlet for his creative talents. No – he was pleased he had decided to invest some real time and effort in this one.

From observing her observing _him_ in the first session she had snuck in to, it was apparent that this little lamb was painfully lacking in confidence as well as being generally naïve and inexperienced. He had wondered and wondered how best to exploit this for a few laughs.

Her desire to be taken seriously as a professional conflicted with what he saw as a natural inclination towards fun and frivolity. He decided it would be wonderfully poetic to switch her ever-so-dull world around and grant her licence to enjoy life again. While doing him a few favours along the way, of course.

That did mean her old life needed to be completely crushed first, but if he did it right she'd be _begging him_ to let her thank him when he was finished. And proper thanks would involve more than just flimsy handcuffs as props.

She was fiddling nervously with her pen, clearly unsure of whether she should say something to break what was to her an uncomfortable silence. But she was still sneaking him embarrassed little glances.

He'd been aware of the infatuation well before she had diagnosed her own squirmy, mushy feelings. She was clearly attracted by his charisma, and underneath that poorly fitted disguise of a serious young doctor he saw she was still an emotionally needy child. Now that silly book idea had come to light it seemed the distant promise of fame and fortune might have had something to do with it as well.

It hadn't taken much effort to speed the process up once that bore Harrow was out of the picture (he reminded himself that he owed Croc a favour for that little job; the big lummox was useful once in a while). Lay the charm on a bit – but not too much, cut back on the levels of gore and screaming in his tales to start with, pretend to show an interest in her dreadfully dull life, finally roll out the sob stories. She was soon ready to start eating out of his hand.

Her simple little brain plainly struggled to reconcile her desire for professionalism and a career and other such boring, humdrum matters with her desire for him. She had held out longer that he'd thought at first, but then the snivelling collapse came. This crude, raw lump of clay was just about ready to be sculpted into something beautiful.

He judged that he had almost squeezed her enough. Just a little more. Then he could begin the creative part of rebuilding and modelling her however he wanted.

"Ooh, you are a kinky little thing on the quiet, aren't you." He purred, ignored her stuttering protests. "Now, now – methinks you doth protest too much."

But now wasn't the time for teasing. Sex was not a priority; if it had been then he would have had his pretty blonde doctor wrapped around his little finger (and whatever other body parts came to mind) ten minutes into their first session alone together. But where was the fun in that?

Okay – there clearly would be _some_ fun. He wasn't made of stone. But a few hours of steamy therapy-room sex would at best only result in his dear doctor being fired and running home crying to mummy and daddy with a few bruises, and if he really got into it maybe her swearing off men for life. Amusing, but a very transitory diversion.

This was the first time he had been gifted with such a naïve and impressionable young doctor, already half infatuated with him before he had even spoken two words to her. He didn't want to waste this rare opportunity to create his own thing of twisted beauty from such dull, if promising, raw materials.

So time to apply one final, carefully judged squeeze.

He sighed and shook his head, fixing her with a disappointed stare. "But you are right you know. You haven't exactly been professional."

Her face fell like he'd slapped her. He mentally chortled with barely-suppressed glee; he'd only put the tiniest bit of a sneer into that one. It was so hard to find fun like this in Arkham normally… Now to slather on the empathy with a trowel and build back up for the final fall.

"I mean I understand; I do. You're a lovely and vivacious young woman at the start of your career. You need to establish a reputation to be taken seriously in your field. So you stop smiling that sweet smile, suppress that delightful laugh." He was such a charmer when he chose to be, noting the way her eyes shined at the compliments. "But when we are alone together and you have permission to laugh and to cry, and to be the real you, to show the Harley behind Dr Quinzel… It's natural you would be attracted to someone like myself who lives freely like that all the time. You desire the same freedom to truly be yourself."

He left a pregnant pause for her to digest this.

"Which is all well and good, but you are by far the most useless psychiatrist I've ever been treated by. If you could even call those earlier attempts to struggle through some grade school level tests 'treatment'." He noted the start of a wobble in her lower lip as her head dropped, hiding her face from his gaze. Almost! Just a little more... "I would honestly say that I would have got more medical benefit from you reading something by Dr Phil, although it probably would have still gone over your head." He gave a cruel chuckle. "You really are pitiful."

The sound of her finally breaking into choking sobs was like music to his ears.


	9. Art Therapy part 2

**Art Therapy Part Two**

"Oh Harley-girl, hush hush. There's no need to be so upset. Why don't you come and sit down next to me?" The Joker scooted round to sit normally as far as the ankle chain would allow, and patted the couch as best he could with handcuffed wrists. He made a mental note to divest himself of these flimsy restraints at the next opportunity; the creative process would be much easier with a full range of motion.

She nodded and made a movement as if to follow his invitation, but then paused. The Joker saw conflict written on her face through the tears and hiccupping sobs. What was it that made her hesitate? Was it anger and upset at his words, even though she believed them herself? Some survival instinct reminding her of all those crime scene photos in his file? Or even still a lingering ember of some sense of professionalism; her supervisor's voice warning her never to get within six feet of a patient?

He gave her a sly smile. "I promise I won't bite." He got a wan smile in return, and she quickly stood and walked across the room towards him, as if she needed to get there quickly before she changed her mind.

She took a seat next to him. Even in her upset she seemed careful to sit just far enough away that their legs didn't touch. He remedied this by inching ever so slightly towards her, leaning in to her personal space and taking one of her tiny warm hands in his shackled cool ones. She didn't pull back, he noted; just the slightest of twitches as their skin touched. Her sobbing slowed.

"Harley, Harley… You know I'm only telling the truth, and you know it's for your own good for you to hear it, right? But still I'm sorry if this hurts." A pause, to build tension. "You shouldn't be here."

She turned to face him, stricken with confusion. "But you just asked me to sit next to you…"

"I didn't mean here on the couch, nitwit! I was talking more widely here as in here at Arkham!" He quickly reigned in his sudden desire to slap some sense into her, and softened his voice once more. "You have been a wonderfully appreciative audience, but as I've explained; you're not even a third rate psychiatrist. Maybe old Arkham has been distracted by your other obvious charms up to now, but you can't keep pretending for much longer. Soon they'll all know and you'll be out the door; a part qualified shrink with no references. How does a lifetime of suburban relationship counselling sound? Because that'll be all you can get."

It evidently didn't sound too great to her as it set off a fresh wave of sobbing, her head now in her hands as she contemplated the bleak future ahead of her. He took the opportunity to shift his hands upwards to her shoulder, making shushing noises as he did so.

He spied what he was after – a hairclip helping to keep her oh-so-prim-and-proper but rapidly disintegrating bun together. Covering the motion by rubbing and patting her shoulder almost absently, he deftly removed the clip and started working at the childishly simple mechanism of the cuff on his left wrist.

Mere moments later both sets of cuffs were discarded under the couch and his distressed doctor hadn't noticed a thing. He would have made Houdini green with envy. The hairclip disappeared into his sock for safe keeping.

His hands now fully operational, he was ready to get sculpting. First priority was to cut out some of the hysterics to his left. It was just loud enough that a passing guard or doctor might overhear and decide to check on their inexperienced intern. If they found him out of his cuffs and her on the couch next to him, certain (only partially accurate) assumptions could be made. As fun as it would be for her to get struck off and probably end up a lonely, bitter nobody in a dead-end job with an apartment full of cats, he had his heart set on a different ending for this fairytale.

The Joker moved swiftly, getting a good handful of blonde hair in one fist and pulling her head up to face him, clamping his other hand over her mouth. She emitted a muffled squeak of protest that tickled his palm.

"Look, Harley-girl, all this wailing and sniffling is getting a bit old." He said evenly, affecting an expression of bored disinterestedness as he stared down at her helpless panic. "Can you maybe cut it out for five minutes?"

Her eyes darted about frantically above his hand. Was she kicking herself for letting her guard down and sitting next to him? Wondering where-oh-where his restraints had gone? Trying to recall the location of the panic button somewhere back near her chair, where _she_ was supposed to be?

But although there was a spark of fear in her eyes, and her chest was rising and falling almost in time with her racing heart, she wasn't struggling. That always forgotten third option; fight, flight or _freeze_. A tussle or a chase were fun, but he had a soft spot for the rabbit-in-headlights routine. It was certainly easier when he only had the confined space of a consulting room to work with, and there was the ever-present risk of nosey eavesdropping guards.

The Joker switched from his mock-boredom expression to one of intense, focused interest in a second. Her next reaction would be important.

"You're my little Harlequin." He spoke softly, and reached with his thumb to brush away a few stray tears. "You should be the very spirit of fun and frivolity." He released the fistful of hair and smoothed out the tangle with a few gentle motions, removing his other hand from her mouth at the same time. It was slightly damp and he resisted the urge to wipe his palm on the fabric of his institution pyjamas.

The blonde doctor remained frozen in place. She stared up at him for several seconds after the grip on her hair was released, but stayed blissfully silent. He certainly seemed to have shocked her out of her histrionics. Then she straightened up with a slightly dazed expression on her face, as though unsure what exactly had just happened.

The Joker leaned a fraction closer, staring intently at her eyes, and reached across to run a delicate finger down the face he had been cruelly twisting to look up at him just moments earlier. Her eyes gleamed, and he could read the longing in them as plainly as if she had just torn all her clothes off and begged him to take her there on the couch. Her face was flushed and still damp from the tears.

Time to reel her in.

"You know Harley, I wouldn't make such a pretty, spirited girl pretend to be something she's not." He spoke slowly, emphasising the words. "These stuffy doctors and academics are stifling you, sucking out all your joy. Half of them wouldn't know a joke if it kicked them right in the seat of the pants! If you stay here you'll end up just like them – dried up old shells, all life gone." He had taken her hand again, much easier without the cuffs in the way, and now started to gently trace the fingers of his free hand up one arm, to her shoulder and back down again. She silently bit at her lip, and he continued.

"They don't appreciate the real you. They can't. These people have no understanding of the true joy of living life free to be yourself, as I do. They just can't see the world as I do. And I see you can be so much more than you are now." Her eyes closed and her breathing had become more shallow. "More than your muddled, mediocre mind could possibly comprehend from the confines of this tiny room. All your life, all you have seen is shadows.

But I see your potential, and I am willing to give you a gift. I will bring you light, and show you the world as it really is. If you are prepared to look."

He cupped her chin in his hand and positioned his face just inches away from hers.

"Open your eyes Harley."

Two startled blue eyes flashed open and met his electric green ones.

"What'll it be? A few dozen years of work and sleep and late night television until the boredom and loneliness get too much and you go out in a handful of pills and half a bottle of cheap wine? Or you could try actually living for the first time in your life. I can show you, if you want me to."

From this distance, just a few inches from her nose, he could almost see the little cogs and wheels slowly grinding out a decision. He suspected he would just have to wait a moment or two for her to catch up, as he usually did when explaining some simple but brilliant concept to someone of less genius than himself – ie everyone. She'd better catch up quickly; he promised himself that the little tease was really going to feel some pain if she was just playing hard to get.

The Joker let his free hand wander a little lower, and it seemed to startle his doctor back to some semblance of focus at the matter at hand. "Well my little Harley-girl? Will you let me show you?"

There was a pause, then almost more of a breath than a whisper. "Yes."

It was met with a breathy chuckle of satisfaction.

* * *

Dr Quinzel wasn't quite sure how she had ended up sitting back at her desk in her tiny, cramped office. Part of her was waiting for her to wake up and discover the whole thing had been a particularly vivid dream, brought on by reading the Joker's file just before bed as she had every night for the past several weeks.

Maybe she'd had cheese on toast as a late night snack. A combination of cheese and gory police reports last thing at night wasn't a recipe for pleasant dreams... But in her heart she knew she couldn't self-deny her way out of this one.

Most of the session was just a blur, but she knew she had started off by saying she was stepping down as his doctor and somehow ended up sitting on the couch next to him, bawling her eyes out.

He had said some terrible things, but they were all true. She had needed to hear them.

And then he had spoken so softly, and taken her face in his hands. It was as though her smothered, romantic daydreams had been amazingly realised, and she had thought he was about kiss her.

Instead he had done so much more.

He had opened up entirely and shown her his soul; inviting her to join him. He had seen how she felt deep inside; worthless and empty, covering up her feelings with a mask – pretending to be something she couldn't, and had never even wanted to be. He had promised to give her purpose by showing her how she could live her life as he did, with joy and laughter. No need to hide to the world. She could be herself, and with him.

She had whispered yes so softly, but inside she had wanted to scream it from the rooftops. And he had just gently chuckled, and said she would be his perfect little Harlequin when he was finished. _His_.

He wanted to make _her_ better, to make her more like _him_.

She had almost started sobbing again, this time with undeserved joy.

But he had just chuckled again at her wobbling lower lip and glistening eyes. Then he'd quickly but gently stood her up and walked her back across the room to her chair, smoothing back a few stray strands of hair that had once been so tightly imprisoned in her bun before he'd caught his hands in it. She hadn't even realised their session should have ended five minutes ago.

"Let's not try to give the guards too much to gossip about, huh doc?" He'd said as he fixed her hair back into place.

She was almost beyond caring, and wanted to tell him that the whole asylum could know what had happened and she would be nothing but delighted when they fired her. But he had seen something in her overexcited eyes, and stopped her thoughts with a piercing glare and a much less gentle hand cupping her chin roughly to ensure she had his attention.

"Now remember this isn't the time to get all sappy on me, Harley. You are useful to me here at the present time, so here you will stay until I wish you to be elsewhere. That means continuing with your little façade of being a half-competent intern, not blubbing every five minutes, and trying to look less like a lovesick, kickable puppy. Got it?"

His stern words couldn't stop an upwelling of pride in her chest; _she was useful to him here – already_! She wasn't even sure what she had done to be useful, but resolved to do her best to remain so as she quickly nodded her understanding.

He grunted an acknowledgment as he dropped her chin and returned to his original position across the room on the couch, clicking the cuffs back into place just moments before there was a knock at the door. One of the guards opened it slightly and stuck his head into the consulting room. "Everything okay in here Dr Quinzel? It's 4:10pm – sorry we're a little late."

"No problem Mike; we're all done for today." She had no idea how she had managed to make her voice sound so normal, and busied herself pretending to note something on her files. She didn't trust how she would sound if she looked either the guard or her darling Joker in the face.

"Same time tomorrow, Dr Quinzel?" The Joker asked in a playful tone as the second guard unlocked the cuff connected to the leg of the couch and they led him out of the room. "You've given me plenty to think about until then. I really believe we've made a breakthrough today..."

In the blink of an eye they were gone and she was left alone in the room; now she was back in her office staring blankly at her empty notepad. She must have walked there but couldn't recall it. Her mind was a jumble of suddenly unrepressed feelings and wondering about the future; what ifs and maybes and if onlys…

Her darling Joker had told her he would show her what life could be like if she actually lived it. She knew her new life would start from their next session tomorrow. She was ready to be reborn, and to start afresh.

Harley sighed soppily and doodled lovehearts and romantic lyrics on the blank notepaper until it got dark and she could no longer see what she was writing.

The next twelve hours were spent on autopilot. She had driven home barely noticing the usual rush hour traffic, eaten an evening meal without tasting it. She'd even read her favourite part of his file – the bit she'd previously gone through and 'edited' to remove all references to him being an incurable homicidal sociopath, highlighting instead the sections that referred to his charisma and charm –without seeing it.

She thought she would lie awake and toss and turn, wondering what he was doing and if he was thinking about her. But instead she had slept soundly and dreamlessly, her body and mind exhausted by the events of the day.

Morning came and Harley awoke feeling like a child on Christmas day. She rushed through a shower and a quick breakfast without stopping to watch the morning news as she usually would, and jumped into her car to make the half hour drive to Arkham. Sure her session with her darling might not be until the afternoon, but she would still be in the same building just a few floors away from his cell and that thought brought her a warm feeling of contentment.

There were a few extra guards loitering around the entrance to the car park, part of her distractedly noted, but that wasn't entirely unusual. Over the course of the months she had been working at Arkham there had typically one or two escapes a week, and extra guards always followed. Bumping up security after an escape had seemed to her to be bolting the stable door when the horse was probably already in the middle of a crime spree downtown.

She giggled at her silly metaphor and had to resist sudden the impulse to skip up the stone steps to the main entrance. As she signed in at the front desk one of the guards she didn't recognise caught a look at her nametag.

"Dr Quinzel? Dr Leland asked if you could see her in her office first thing."

She frowned and gripped the pen a little tighter as she completed her signature, but tried to appear unconcerned. "What about?"

"I'm just the messenger, doctor. But she seemed pretty insistent."

Harley tried to focus as she made her way through the corridors that led to her supervisor's office. Did they know? Had she given something away? She racked her brain but couldn't think of anything she had done to let her mask slip.

She couldn't care about such mundanities as her reputation or career any longer, but her angel would be so angry if she failed him and lost her position; the position he had said she could be useful in. He would be disappointed in her.

Just the thought caused a stabbing pain in her heart, and a strangled sob to escape her lips. Dr Quinzel had to detour via the nearest bathroom to splash some cold water on her face and take a moment to compose her face into something slightly less than the anguish she felt.

Her emotions in check, she knocked on the door marked "Dr Joan Leland" and heard a muffled acknowledgment from inside the office. Taking a deep breath she opened it and walked through, a small and irreverent part of her wondering whether they'd let her keep the nameplate off her door when they kicked her out for the dozens of professional rules she had breached in the past few weeks.


	10. Art Therapy part 3

**Art Therapy Part Three**

The knock had seemed tentative, and the voice even more so. "One of the fellas on the front desk said you wanted to see me, Dr Leland?"

She lifted her head. "Yes Harley, do come in and take a seat. And I keep telling you – it's only Jeramiah who's stuffy enough to insist the staff should all refer to each other as doctor, so as long as he's not here – my name is Joan."

Dr Leland got a weak smile for her trouble as the girl – she always had trouble seeing the interns as adults when they seemed to get younger every year – walked over and sat down in the seat opposite her. The poor thing looked quite pale, and she remembered her mentioning she wasn't feeling too great at lunchtime the day before.

"Are you alright Harley? You look a little pale."

"No I'm fine Dr… Joan." Another weak smile. "Just didn't get much sleep last night, that's all. What was it you wanted to see me about?"

Dr Leland sighed. "I'm afraid it's about your patient." She didn't miss the sudden gleam in the girl's eyes and the tightening of her hands into a nervous ball, and tried to stave off the perfectly natural agitation that was likely to result from the news she had to deliver. The extra guards around the place had evidently given her an inkling.

"Now I don't want you getting any idea that this was your fault – it wasn't. I know you are quite new to this position but you are dedicated and hardworking, and I am perfectly satisfied that you have been doing the best job you can. But the Joker is a rule unto himself – it was only a matter of when, rather than if."

Dr Leland twisted around in her chair to pick up a file from the far corner of the desk, which she handed to the young woman. It was a collection of photographs and messy, handwritten security reports. There hadn't been time to type them up yet.

"They don't know exactly what it was he used; something small, probably a paperclip. Try as we might we never can seem to get them off all the files and correspondence in this place... Thankfully being the night shift there weren't too many other people around to raise the alarm once he was out of his cell; that would have only led to more people being injured. Brian Porter, the guard who got the worst of it, is still on the critical list but the staff over at Gotham General seem hopeful."

The blonde woman seemed to stare at the pictures with unseeing eyes, then looked up at her. "And the Joker?"

"Gone. Probably holed up somewhere in Gotham now, plotting another over-elaborate scheme to antagonise his favourite nocturnal vigilante." The poor girl looked heartbroken. Joan mentally sighed again – the new ones always took it hard when they first realised they couldn't reform someone overnight. Not that the Joker had ever a plausible candidate for reform anyway. It took experience to harden the heart enough to shake off such feelings, and that could only be gained through time.

"Like I said Harley – none of this is your fault. I know you devoted a lot of time and attention to this case, and it will set you in really good stead for the rest of your internship here. I'll assign you some new cases this afternoon." She gave the girl a smile in a bid to cheer her up. "But you never know with the Joker – the right luck and Batman might have your patient back with you by the end of day."

She was a bit disappointed Harley didn't seem to share her optimism.

* * *

Dr Quinzel listlessly filed away the notes from her latest session with another trivial, minor patient. A couple of screaming hallucinations and some muttering about being persecuted by a giant bat, so the prison system had shifted him across to Arkham. The less-than-competent prison staff couldn't have read in his notes about a run in with both Dr Crane, or "Scarecrow" as the man insisted on calling himself, and Batman the last time he was on the outside. That covered his symptoms nicely. It wasn't enough to keep her occupied when he mind wandered so easily from the confines of Arkham's damp stone walls.

It had been the worst week of her life.

How could she eat, sleep or even breathe when she didn't know where _He_ was; her beautiful, brilliant angel.

She understood him having to leave so suddenly without telling her. She saw now that being trapped in a cell was damaging him; all the restriction sapping away his energy and genius. If he needed to get out and exercise his creative brilliance and had seen the chance then of course he would take it; he'd have to. She understood.

But it still hurt just a little that her Puddin hadn't felt he could ask her to help him. She knew it would have been a big responsibility, but she would have done it gladly and tried to prove her worth to him.

He needed to be free but still she worried. He was brilliant but she saw that inside, he was fragile. He would never admit it, and she would never tell him that she knew, but she had put together his tales of childhood abuse and the pain inflicted on him by a society that rejected what it could not comprehend. He was a tortured soul, and that delicate, precious part of him could be so easily broken by further harsh treatment at the hands of the unforgiving world.

Dwelling on the many terrible outcomes he might face made her ache inside.

She realised that she looked ill. Skipped meals and late nights worrying and scanning the news stations for reports of calling cards, bodies with fixed, rictus smiles, anything to suggest he was alive and well – it wasn't a recipe for glowing health.

Dr Leland kept looking at her with that concerned, maternal expression from across the cafeteria or meeting room. Harley wished she would mind her own business, but couldn't say that to her face. So she started spending her lunch hour in her office, pouring over his old files or just staring out of the window and wondering what he was doing. Any time she had to interact with other staff members she kept a tight mask on her face and said as little as possible.

Rumours abounded that the Joker had made a threat on her life before he left after divulging some dark secret, and that was why she was acting so oddly – waiting for the axe to drop. It reached the point that Dr Arkham intervened and called her to his office with Joan present, asking her if the Joker had made any such threat. She had denied it of course. She'd almost wanted to laugh – he had promised her life, not death! But their petty, humdrum minds would never have understood.

Arkham had still offered to arrange for one of the guards to escort her home each evening and check her apartment for signs of intrusion, but she declined. How she longed to find a sign; to arrive home and find a note, a playing card, even just the sense of him having been there. But each night her apartment was as dark and empty as the night before.

So away from the prying eyes of nosey staff and crazy patient she sat and clutched his now dog-eared and tear stained files to her chest, crying until exhaustion gave her a few hours of oblivion.

* * *

"Harley! I've been looking all over for you." Dr Leland exclaimed, bursting into the staff lounge where Harley had been morosely stirring about six packets of sugar into lukewarm coffee. That was about all that was keeping her standing through the worry and lack of sleep.

The part of her that took responsibility for keeping up the pretence of everything being fine prompted her to respond in as normal a tone as possible. "Hi Joan, what's up?"

Dr Leland gave a slight grin. "Do you remember what I said about Batman bringing your patient back? So it might have taken almost two weeks rather than one day…"

Harley's head shot up. "You mean he's here? Where?" A shower of sugar packets fell to the floor, forgotten.

Joan assumed she was referring to Batman. "We got the call ten minutes ago – he's probably just arriving, usually uses the back entrance to avoid the cameras…" Her final words were lost as Harley darted out of the room and ran to where her darling was being brought back to her.

She had to push past several other curious members of staff, none of whom had any business gawping at her dear Joker's return. Unless they were all there to see the famous 'Flying Rodent" as the Joker had liked to call him, along with other less complimentary names.

What was so impressive about a man in a mask dressed up like a bat, anyway? Although her Puddin certainly had a lot of time for him, from the stories he told his nemesis just seemed like an overgrown playground bully. Always throwing his weight around and wrecking the schemes her darling had poured his genius into.

Then she suddenly stumbled to a halt as she saw them; a dark, glowering figure and her beautiful angel. She only had eyes for him. Her first impression was that of awe; seeing him for the first time dressed in his true colours of purple and orange and green. He seemed somehow so much more vivid and intense and _real_ than when he was forced into the dull off-white asylum pyjamas.

Then she noticed the tears in that perfectly tailored suit, the blood smeared across his face, and the slightly awkward way he held his left arm away from its neighbour it was cuffed to at the wrists.

She choked back a sob. Her poor darling was clearly badly injured, and the likely perpetrator was still holding him up by the scruff of his jacket.

"I believe this is yours." The man growled from behind his mask, speaking to the small crowd of staff. "You really should be careful not to let him stray without a collar and tag."

Harley wanted to laugh scornfully at the pitiful attempt at a joke, but then she saw her Puddin roll his eyes and sneer. She didn't want him to think that she found the bullying Bat's remark funny so she kept a straight face while the other staff tittered.

Then the Joker caught her eye and smirked ever so slightly. She felt a thrill rush through her, and her face broke into a soppy grin before she could stop it. At this the smirk remained unchanged but above it his eyes grew suddenly cold, and it was as though she could hear him hissing in her ear.

I will break BOTH your arms if you don't wipe that silly grin off your face This Instant.

She jerked back almost as if she had been struck a physical blow, but she got the message. Her grin disappeared as quickly as it had appeared – thankfully no one seemed to have noticed, with all the attention on the famous masked vigilante and her darling Joker. She mentally kicked herself for being weak enough to have almost given herself away within moments of seeing him again.

Luckily it seemed her Puddin wasn't holding it against her. He gave her a jaunty wave with his uninjured arm and his smirk widened, as if he had just spotted her. "Hi doc; did you miss me? You know it's almost worth being caught by the overgrown Flying Rat when there's such a pretty face to be dragged back to." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively as his voice lowered. "You know I can't wait to get back on the couch with you for some more of that 'therapy'."

Harley blushed in confusion. Why he was suddenly making suggestive comments about her in front of several other doctors and staff? Was she still supposed to keep up her act?

But before she had much time to ponder further, the masked brute tightened his grip on the Joker's purple jacket and shook him. Her poor darling must have still been woozy, caught off balance, because he suddenly seemed to stumble and fall face-first into the wall.

"Try giving the staff here some respect, Joker." Batman growled unsympathetically as he yanked him back upright by his collar.

Harley gasped in stunned horror at what she had just witnessed.

"Can't a guy give a pretty doctor a compliment?" Her Puddin sounded aggrieved and vaguely wounded, and when he removed his hands from his face she saw blood trickling from a freshly broken nose.

Harley couldn't believe that none of the other doctors were doing anything to stop this abuse! They were just standing there, silently condoning that masked vigilante's actions. They probably thought her poor Joker deserved it! She momentarily forgot that she was the most junior doctor on staff; she was going to defend him as best she could.

She took a few steps forward. "Mr Batman, or whatever your alias you choose to hide behind. I must insist that you stop this illegal – manhandling – this instant!"

He stared at her in some confusion. "Look, miss…"

"It's 'doctor' actually. Doctor Quinzel." She stood a little straighter, trying to compensate for the fact that she came roughly half way up the hulking man's chest.

"Dr Quinzel," Batman conceded, then continued. "I hardly touched him. Joker quite clearly just did that deliberately, probably in preparation to build another case against this institution for 'maltreatment'. And you should bear in mind that a few cuts and bruises are nothing in comparison to what he's done to several dozen people over the past week."

"But that doesn't make it right to –"

"Sink down to his level? It would be impossible for anyone to sink as far that. No one else can match his level of depravity."

The Joker gave a smile of mock modesty in response to this. "Flatterer."

Harleen just saw that it was futile to argue with this stick-in-the-mud, self righteous bully. She forced herself to smile sweetly at the masked face. "Well thank you very much for returning our patient, and now maybe you could leave so we can all get back to work and the medical staff can take a look at Mr Joker's clearly broken arm." She shot the man a venomous glare from above her smile. "Incidentally, do you have any idea how that happened to him?"

"Walked into a door." The Joker offered from one side of the conversation, deadpan. It failed to raise a smile with man still gripping him tightly by the jacket.

"The police would probably have termed it 'resisting arrest'. I suggest you look the rest up in the papers – you'll never get a word of truth out of the Joker's mouth."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones…" The Joker sang. "Being thrown off a five storey building didn't help either."

That bastard had thrown him off a _building_? Harley couldn't hide the sudden rage she felt, and her face twisted in growling fury. If the Bat hadn't chosen that moment to melt away into the shadows, leaving the Joker in the custody of several guards, she was sure she would have snapped and launched herself at him. She wanted to punch that stupid masked face until it caved in.

Her poor Puddin's strength had evidently lasted just long enough for his tormentor to leave, as he promptly collapsed in a fit of what could only be shock-induced hysterical laughter. She wanted to run at him and envelop him in her arms, but instead she could only watch and hug herself futilely as the guards half-escorted, half-dragged his laughing form down to the medical wing.

* * *

A few cracked ribs, broken arm and nose plus fits of uncontrollable hysterical laughter = really quite a lot of pain. It was a formula he was used to, but it was still enough that for once he hadn't put up much of a fuss when the medical staff dished out a large dose of painkillers.

But it had all been _oh-so worth it_ to see his dippy little doctor itching to square up against Batman. The way she'd held her head high and attempted to sound authoritative in the face of Gotham's famous Dork Knight was almost endearingly pathetic.

The Joker was back in his usual cell; the staff at Arkham never bothered assigning new patients to the accommodation used by their regular "clients" due to the frequency of their visits. The ever-delightful security staff had tried insisting he was placed back in a strait jacket before transporting him from the medical wing, but the duty doctor with more compassion than sense had pointed out that this would be rather uncomfortable given his broken arm and refused to allow it.

The significantly more cautious guards had then refused to assist in moving him until he was doped up to the eyeballs on sedatives.

So now he lay back on his cot, one plaster-coated arm in a sling, and laughed as hard as he could through the shimmering haze of painkillers, sedatives and hilarity. From the outside this amounted to little more than a few muffled chuckles and twitches, almost as though he were laughing in his sleep. Inside however his brain sang with whooping, cackling guffaws.

A short trip over the edge of a warehouse roof had brought his latest brief but productive spell of freedom to an end. Not entirely the Bat's fault really, if he was brutally honest. After all it had been his own explosion that had knocked him over the wall. Next time he was out the dealer who sold him that batch of faulty timers was going to have some painful things done to him before meeting an appropriately premature and explosive end.

The Flying Rodent had been as charmless as ever when he'd pulled him out of the dumpster that had broken the worst of the fall, and also his arm. Bats hadn't complimented him on the hours of effort it had taken to arrange for those killer bees to be put in all those daycare centres. He'd even hidden one nest himself and had been stung – twice! His creative genius never received the proper appreciation from his number one fan; just another return trip to Arkham.

It was as he was being half-pushed up the asylum steps by the Batbore that he vaguely remembered a project he had been working on last time he was there. The other week he'd been struck so suddenly by the (frankly brilliant) killer bees idea that he'd just had to leave the asylum and get to work on it immediately, courtesy of a particularly slow witted guard and a new sharp object he'd picked up somewhere. The previous project had been mentally shelved to finish later.

What was it? Replacing Pammy's organic liquid plant food with herbicide? No he'd done that a while back. Twice in fact – her reaction never got old. Convincing some of the more paranoid schizophrenics that the cafeteria staff were trying to poison them, and sitting back to watch the results? Nope, but a good way to ensure seconds of dessert would be available. Breaking in to the medical records and rewriting Harvey's file to say he had several dozen virulent STDs? That was a good one but he didn't recall getting started on it.

Then a small crowd of medical staff had gathered to welcome him back to their loving bosom, and he'd spotted her. Ohhh… his daffy Dr Quinzel! How could he have forgotten _that_ little piece of work?

He wasn't too hard on himself – he was a brilliant and busy man, and he couldn't afford to devote much of his precious attention to lovesick half-crazy psychiatrists. He could clearly see she hadn't forgotten about him though – she looked pale and drawn, with dark circles around her eyes. Obviously pining for him during his absence, as was only right.

The Joker gifted her the tiniest of smiles and she'd broken into a giant, soppy grin of joy at his acknowledgment of her existence.

His favourable mood instantly shifted and he glared at the foolish twit who was broadcasting her infatuation to the entire room, including Batman. He silently thought of several ways to physically bring this error to her attention and ensure she thought twice next time. Somehow this warning communicated across the room as her grin quickly disappeared and she appeared chastised.

Good mood restored by her prompt deflation, it was then he decided that he might as well pick up his project where he left off while his favourite straight man was still around to assist.

It was never hard to provoke Batsy into being a little physical, and he'd combined it with a crude compliment that had made Harley squirm beautifully. The swan dive into the wall may have been obvious to the Bat but his girl had plainly bought it, and he knew he'd get a lot of mileage out of the already broken arm.

Now would she have regressed in his absence, choosing to stay silent then pouring out tears of woe for him later in the privacy of a therapy session? Or would leaving her to her own devices for two weeks, without him to carefully mould her developing madness, cause her fragile mask of sanity to break down completely at this further demonstration of the cruelty of the world towards him? This at least had the prospect of some blood being spilt when they tried to get the strait jacket on her.

But instead she had surprised him. After that first slip she had managed to keep the mask in place, and play the earnest young doctor passably well. Leaping to his defence over the "manhandling" no less! And when she had almost snapped, and looked like she was about to fly at Batsy and go for his throat… Another spasm of laughter escaped past the sedatives and he screwed his eyes up, clutching at his damaged ribs and ignoring the stabbing pain it caused.

It was as he opened his eyes that he caught a glimpse of blonde hair and white coat disappearing just out of view on the other side of the Perspex wall of his cell. If he had been both slightly more coherent and had someone to hear and be impressed by wit, he might have made some comment about house calls. Now he was back she plainly couldn't bear to leave him in his cold, unforgiving cell for five minutes without checking up on him. Or maybe she wanted to play nurse, he thought with a slight dreamy leer…

After a brief but pleasant period of mental distraction (which he'd decided to blame on the painkillers weakening his concentration), his thoughts returned to the scene earlier where his little Harley had got all puffed up and indignant with the Bat. He wondered just how far the ditzy doctor would have gone if Batsy hadn't snuck away… The Flying Rodent clearly could have snapped her like a twig if she'd actually tried anything physical, but it was the thought behind both her anger and desire that interested him.

So far she had breached several dozen professional rules, quietly submitted while he picked her life apart, quite delightfully broken down emotionally and now almost seemed willing to physically throw herself in front of the Bat-Express. All for him, and with remarkably little threat of bodily injury involved.

Slavish devotion that wasn't motivated primarily by fear or the desire for money and/or power was something new to toy with, and he was very satisfied with what he had created. Obviously there were still a few rough spots, and she would need a final polish, but he thought the bulk of his work was done.

Through the giddy narcotics cocktail he felt something that could almost be described as a sort of paternalistic pride. Like a lion watching a tiny cub gamely gnawing on an buffalo's ankle with harmless milk teeth, the tiny creature convinced it can bring it down.

He chuckled half to himself as the room span around him. His pretty little doctor's transformation was a very successful project indeed.


	11. Art Therapy part 4

**Art Therapy Part Four**

Her poor Puddin looked so vulnerable; hurt and alone in that starkly institutional cell. She felt a single silent tear run down her cheek.

Harley had held back as long as she could from running down to check on the Joker. Dr Leland had been trying to arrange to have a chat with her, following news spreading of her little tête-à-tête with Batman. She had begged off, citing paperwork to be completed for her other patients and trying to play it down as a minor exchange blown up by staff gossip. Joan seemed to have bought it and said she would catch up with her later.

She waited in her office, silently watching the clock until she thought the medical staff would have finished roughly patching him up, and the guards would have departed after moving him back to the maximum security wing. She had an excuse prepared – she would claim she needed to assess whether he would be medically fit to resume therapy the next day – but the guard at the entrance to the secure wing had buzzed her through without a second glance.

She'd managed to keep the professional demeanour in place until she reached the far end of the corridor and saw him lying still on a cot behind the Perspex wall of his cell. His arm was now in a cast, nose swollen and covered with gauze, and his beautiful white face was darkly mottled in several places as bruises began to form. Every now and then he seemed to twitch slightly and mutter something she couldn't hear through the holes in the screen, or chuckle very softly.

Harley raised a palm and placed it against the transparent wall, her heart aching at not being able to touch him and soothe his injuries with gentle hands.

"I love you Mistah J…" She whispered, almost too softly to hear.

Then behind the Perspex there was a sudden spasm of laughter, and the Joker's pale body contorted as he clutched at himself in pain before collapsing back on the thin mattress. Harley wasn't sure what had prompted it; she hoped it wasn't hearing what she had said. She still decided it was time for her to leave before anyone got too suspicious, and quickly turned to walk down the hall trying to ignore the pull of her heart back towards the cell and its occupant.

A few of the other patients were still in their cells and not in classes or therapy sessions, and gave her a curious look as she passed. She tried to ignore them, but a redheaded woman with a shrewd gaze called to her.

"Hey, what did Batman do the clown this time?"

"I really don't think that's any of your business," she read the name on the security chart outside the woman's cell. "Ms Isley."

The woman gave a satisfied grin. "It's just I've heard something about a broken arm and that was my pick in the predicted injury pool. Whoever wins gets to choose the TV station in the rec room for the next month."

The old Harley probably would have just said something prissy about patient confidentiality. The new Harley wanted to slap her, but was conscious of both the nearby guards and the Perspex wall in the way. Plus this "Miss Isley" had to be in the maximum security section with her Puddin for good reason (something about a wacky obsession with plants seemed to ring a bell) and she probably wouldn't take well to being slapped.

Harley came to a compromise and stuck her tongue out at the woman, causing raised eyebrows and a slightly bemused look in response as she turned her back on the cell and continued down the corridor. Within minutes she was back in the solitude and relative safety of her tiny office, and she sat at her desk feeling almost too numb to cry.

What could she do to help her poor angel?

She just wanted to make him happy. It seemed such a simple thing to ask. But what would he want her to do? She could never second-guess his brilliant mind, but she tried to think of the broad strokes of his desires.

He doesn't like it here. He won't want to stay trapped in here. He'll want to escape again.

Well that was simple enough. Her Puddin's genius was certainly wasted cramped up in this dingy dungeon, although she was eternally grateful that fate had brought them together within its damp walls. But now her angel shouldn't have to spend a minute longer locked away than she could possibly help.

He might not have be able to use her assistance for his last escape, but this time it would be all her and she would make him proud.

She sat at her desk and thought and plotted, trying to come up with a plan that was truly worthy of being carried out in his name. Explosives? Mysterious chemicals? Elaborate set-ups? She abandoned her attempt within moments. She shouldn't even pretend she could come up with plans like he did – his genius was awe inspiring. Anything she could think up would serve as a mere homage to his brilliance. So she dialled down the complexity and tried to think of what she could do in her own simple way that would still show its inspiration from his creative genius.

By the time she was satisfied it was growing dark, and few people noticed as she slipped out amidst the shift change.

* * *

Gotham is a pretty eclectic place, and if you want something badly enough then you can probably find it. That includes a joke shop that's open until midnight. Admittedly it was located in one of the rougher parts of the Narrows, but under the circumstances that was an advantage.

Harley didn't bother changing her outfit; being identified later by an eyewitness or CCTV was no longer a major issue for her. But she did concede to leaving her Arkham name badge in the car; being able to read off her chest that she was "Dr Harleen Quinzel" was just making it slightly too easy.

She strode confidently into the shop, paying little heed to the seedy looking man at the counter. There were unsurprisingly no other customers present and she wondered briefly just why anyone other than her would want novelty toys, gags and costumes after 10pm on a weekday, in the Narrows. Either the place was a front for drug sales or there were some pretty kinky prostitutes in the local area.

Harley scooped up an armful of likely looking equipment that she could adapt for her plan; a popgun, retractable boxing glove, sneezing powder, rubber chicken. That last one raised a smile; she was particularly proud of her idea for using the innocent looking rubber novelty for a rather more violent end – provided she could find a handy broken brick in a nearby alleyway she could stuff it with.

The man at the counter seemed disinterested and barely looked up as she gathered up half his shop in her arms.

Moving on to the costume section she quickly scanned the rails waiting for something to leap out at her, something that would fit in with the theme of the evening. There were a few clown costumes but they were all designed for men and she knew they would swamp her. She wanted something to show her figure off a bit; there was no harm in dressing to impress.

Then she spotted it: a vision of alternate red and black material cut to hug curves, highlighted with a diamond motif, white lacy cuffs and an oversized collar. It even came with a matching headpiece that had bells on the end of the two liliripes. A Harlequin style jester. It was almost _too_ perfect. She draped it across one arm, hoping that Mistah J would really get a kick out of it.

Her shopping spree complete, Harley gathered as much as she could under one arm and fiddled with the boxing glove mechanism with her spare hand as she headed for the exit. The man at the desk finally seemed to take notice and threw his rumpled newspaper to one side as she approached the register, then walked straight past.

"Hey, you planning on paying for all that?"

"Not particularly." She called behind her in a sing-song voice, now reaching for the door handle.

This being the heart of the Narrows after all, Harley wasn't terribly surprised to hear the shotgun being racked in response. She turned to see the seedy proprietor aiming it in her direction.

"Look girlie; if you've got some twisted client who wants you to dress up like a clown and whack him off with a rubber chicken – it aint none of my business. Each to their own. But this isn't a lending library and you've gotta pay for that stuff."

Harley gave a quiet internal chuckle at her kinky prostitute theory being proved correct, and smiled at the man holding the gun. "I wasn't planning on that sort of whacking. Maybe I could demonstrate?" She smoothly released the mechanism on the retractable boxing glove and it shot out, catching the man on the chin and knocking him back into a shelf of oversized chattery teeth. The shotgun fell harmlessly to one side.

A tiny and very distant voice, one she had not heard much from lately, feebly wailed that now she had really crossed the line. This was effectively armed robbery – slightly unorthodox armed robbery, but robbery all the same. Plus this was merely the appetiser to her banquet of planned chaos. The voice timidly argued that if she stopped now, maybe they would only revoke her licence and give her a community sentence. She didn't have to go through with it all…

Harley squelched the voice out with a sudden cackle of laughter. She had robbed a joke shop using a novelty gag weapon, in order to get more novelty gag weapons she could use to break the greatest clown of all out of Arkham. She was doing it for him, and it had been fun! She didn't _want_ to stop.

Humming something jaunty she didn't quite remember the words to, Harley retracted the boxing glove and tucked it back under one arm. She waved farewell to the prone shop owner and skipped merrily out of the store to her waiting car, before driving back to her apartment.

Two hours later her preparations were complete and she got back into her car, bundled up in a long coat and hat pulled down over her face, heavy duffel bag of tricks in one hand. She figured it wouldn't do to catch the attention of any passing cops who might want to check where she was driving to at 1am. Giggling softly as she imagined their reaction to a face-full of sneezing powder, she turned the key in the ignition and headed for Arkham.

[And that's all folks! End of the line.]


End file.
